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I am currently have w7 64bit installed on my comp, but I still prefer to use XP.

Issues:

Windows 7 64bit seems to think I have a LCD monitor, and when I go below 1600x1200 everything becomes blurry as if I was running 16x AA in 400x300 res in a non native res on lcd. (only heard of this happening in 64bit w7)

Windows 7 Has no proper way to disable mouse accel (logitech drivers are an exception). In XP someone made a fix to completely disable it on kernel level. (Microsoft dont care about pc gamers?)

Monitor hertz: People are having problems, both 32 and 64 bit w7.
Some people on the ESR forums (quakenerd community site) said that they had to cut pins on their vga cable to be able to set HZ.

USB hertz: Some people like setting a high HZ on their mice, and its kind of a pain doing this without using a driverpackage that came with your fancy samurai xtreme 8000dpi quadlaser mouse.

Sound drivers: Why is it that sound is so much better on xp when gaming? In xp my 3d soundstage is excellent, but in vista\w7 it feels as if the soundstage is more limited. (I play using headphones)

Windows update: confusing, and its much harder to keep track of what updates you want to download (I guess that's why they call it user friendly)

UAC: big improvement over the old one, but I'd rather be behind the wheel than in the backseat giving directions.

Icons: EVERYTHING IS XBOX HUEG!

I didn't pay for my windows 7, since I got a free license (No, I did not pirate it). I'm still gonna stick with my trusty old XP install for now. Reply

"So if Win7 succeeds where Vista failed, it’s going to be because of marketing and word of mouth."

I disagree. The way Win7 will succeed where Vista failed is that Windows users will no longer put off new computer purchases or backdate to XP. Likewise, Win7 will succeed the same way Vista succeeded, through OEM sales. The primary difference is almost all those sales will continue to run the OEM O/S.

This user behavior is not just a marketing and word of mouth victory. It is positive user response to good work done by Microsoft. Microsoft has done something earthshaking, for their culture and Operating Systems in general, they have released a new O/S that is not bigger (in disk image) or slower then the last version. Win7 boots up faster and is more user responsive than Vista (something your benchmarks truly don't measure). This is not marketing or word of mouth. This is empirical, even if you failed to benchmark it.

I watched with bemusement the peculiar vengeance of friends and coworkers either a.) Buying new computers and backdating to XP and/or b.) putting off new computer buys and/or upgrading XP systems to avoid Vista. I'm not talking about Microsoft haters and Linux lovers, I'm talking about died-in-the-wool Windows users who saw nothing wrong with Windows XPSP3 (plenty wrong with older XP though).

Vista backdating and postponed post-Vista sales may be "edge cases" but they are critical to Microsoft in a down economy. MS needs both OEM sales AND retail sales to maintain market share and profitability. Users maintaining XP licenses ad infinitum are a huge drain as MS has to continue to maintain security on this rather porous O/S without benefit of much new revenue coming in from it.

I have notice some people are have a problem sharing there printer with windows 7.
I found the real answer to the windows 7 additional printer driver problem for network sharing. It is in the name windows 7 names the printer. The INF file has it listed as a different name, there for it does not see it as a driver for your printer. You can change this in the INF file to match the windows 7 name.

My printer is attached to the Windows 7(64) PC and I can now access it from my Laptop Vista x86.

Example: Windows 7 calls my printer "Canon Inkjet iP4300"
In the INF file the printer is called "Canon iP4300"
The difference is the word "Inkjet"

Open the INF file with notepad and edit it and save then go ahead and add additional drivers.

There are a few people who visit forums with the idea to knock competitors products regardless of how good they are. When these people invade a forum they leave as much negative information about a product that hurts their own bottom line. I remember a forum that had some bad posts about AMD where the poster was traced back to Intel. It reminds me of TV advertisements from Apple and Microsoft.

I read some of the comments in a forum with much skepticism. When someone says Windows or Macs blow, then I know their comment is not honest as both if these operating systems are very nice. If you're talking politics or religion, then anything goes.

Windows 7 is a very nice OS. It works on many kinds of hardware and allows people to easily get a job done. 7 has many updates that make the various UIs easier to use. Ever try to delete several files and have one of them in use in XP? In 7 you will get the chance to skip the in use file and delete the rest with out the hassle in XP. There are many other nice improvements to make your PC session easier and more enjoyable in 7. The same goes for almost any of the systems commercially available. When they are updated there are usually improvements made to make your life easier and eliminate problems. Reply

OK..that's out of the way...i think we can all agree that this system OC'd to 3.7Ghz for 24/7 operation is NOT a piece of crap.

I've run Win 7 from the alpha to the RTM on this same system.
XP pro 32 bit is faster in every game or benchmark I run.

Not only that, but my Win XP install is now, 7 years old and has been moved (via Ghost 2003) from an nForce 2 to an nForce 5 and now to my current motherboard....ONLY changes to my primary partition image, have been the chipset and display drivers.

I have not had one infection or BSOD (other than due to over clocking) for the past 7 years, running XP Pro. Simply put, if you aren't computer literate, don't blame the OS....any OS. The blame is on the user...period. I CAN get infected on XP, Vista or Win 7 without even trying hard. The Win 7 dock/taskbar is a joke and totally useless, as are the "libraries". As for driver/app compatibility...Win 7 is compatible NOW....but as devs roll out new apps and hardware, Win 7 will suffer just like all the other OS's.

As for Win 7, I'm going to pass. I don't CARE if it can't run all my household media devices, which it could if I so chose.

Ms is not in the business of creating GREAT OS's, they are in the business of making money. They screwed up when they made XP Pro, they did it RIGHT! Now they are paying for it.

If you WANT to be sheep, led around with MS's ring through your nose.....go for it, I won't stop you.

This comment if for those folks that don't have money to throw around and are being possibly swayed into purchasing yet another MS operating system, with the belief that they won't have problems with it down the road, or that it will be a better OS than XP.

There's a REASON XP has been around for so long....it works....well!

Don't anyone waste time saying I don't know what I'm talking about or that I am spreading FUD :/ I know what I SEE when I run these OS's on the same system. No amount of graphs or suspect benchmarks will change what MY benchmarks show me. I've been in the computer business for almost 30 years (from mainframes to PCs to consoles).

All I'm saying is before you rush out and buy a new OS, wait a year or so then Google: Windows 7 issues....for example. Because that's when the truth comes out. Microsoft can buy off ANY reviewer, and although I'm not saying this HAS happened here, I just want people to realize that it is easily done.

I'm a long time fan of AnandTech...but these benchmarks are far from accurate. I attribute that more to the fact that this site is more attuned to hardware reviews, and one of the best in that endeavor.

Again save your time responding to this...I won't be back here to even see them until I'm ready for new hardware again...then this will be the 1st place I go :)
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I find it borderline ridiculous that in your entire article about Win 7, with its lukewarm conclusion and all, you never once mentioned Homegroups. Having installed Win 7 on several machines myself, I think that this is the coolest new feature in Windows 7, and easily enough to justify making the upgrade all by itself. In case you weren't paying attention, Homegroups let you easily share movies, music, printers, pictures, documents, and whatever else you want between all of your computers. And the great thing about it is that Homegroups just work. This is a major improvement, because although it was possible to get similar results in previous versions of Windows, doing so was a major pain in the ass, and required a fairly long and error-prone intial setup process, and several more manual steps on each machine to set up the shared media once the network was established. Homegroups bring an end to all that, as all you do is give each PC the password, and then they can all talk with each other instantly. Not only that, but the level of integration is superb. Homegroup libraries automatically show up in WMP, and can be easily browsed and searched in Explorer. Gone is the slow and clunky network browser interface of old.

I love how easily the Homegroup allows me to stream music from my desktop to my laptop when I am working, and how it lets me download a movie onto my laptop, and then easily play it on my HDTV (which is hooked up to one of the desktops), without having to go to any crazy lengths to make it work, and how it finally took all the pain out of getting the networked printed to work. Homegroups take a bunch of features that were technically present in previous versions of Windows, give them a much tighter integration with the UI, and make them much easier to use, and the result is something so completely awesome that for anyone who has multiple PC's switching to Windows 7 from any previous version should be a no-brainer.

And once again, I am quite disappointed that your article failed to even brush upon this topic. You give Win 7 such a lukewarm reception in your conclusion, but at the same time you've completely neglected to take into account one of its new features that can provide a significant reason to upgrade for anyone who has more than one PC at home. Reply

I do agree, that it could be a pain in the butt once in a while to setup file sharing in Windows XP. But hardly worth the additional fee to upgrade. Because of this pain in the rear however, we have learned over time how to get things working.

Since we always used professional HP products for printing, running the install wizard from HP was all that was required to get things working correctly. Sometimes this does require knowing a bit about networks( including your own network ). But if you know this( as you should ), I fail to see how it is a problem.

Now if this is somehow related to the lack of permissions in XP home; Perhaps I could see your point. This is not what I am seeing you write however.

Anyways, perhaps the writers of this article share my opinion on the matter ? Reply

I have 32-bit WinXP on PC and 32-bit Vista on notebook. I simply HATE the latter. No matter what I do, it takes longer. But I recall every new OS from microsoft was SIGNIFICALLY (tens of %) faster then the previous one (according to Microsoft ads) yet I never experienced it myself.
So, why should I upgrade to Win7 again?

1) Because Win7 is slightly faster in some apps and slightly slower in others? (significally slower when hibernating)
2) New flishy-flashy effects?
3) Puzzling changes in UI, that, I guess, were supposed to make it "even more user friendly"?
4) DirectX 11? Oh, bundling those only with new OSes what a clever move.

Also the hibernate benchmark is skewed when you consider that 32-bit XP is storing less memory to the hard drive than 64-bit Vista/Win7. 32-bit XP only had to persist ~3 gigs of RAM to the hard drive, while 64-bit Win7/Vista had to persist the full 4 gigs. Hibernating speed is fairly similar in speed between XP and Win7. It would be a better comparison to either limit all machines to 2-3 gigs of RAM for the hibernating test, use 32-bit Vista/Win7 (yuck), or 64-bit XP. Reply

And Homegroups. They puzzingly fail to even mention them in the article, but if you happen to have more than one computer, then Homegroups are awesome, and enough to justify the upgrade all by themselves, in my opinion. Reply

Snow leopard sounds sexy. Windows 7 has the brand appeal of a pocket protector. That said I have to throw my vote in as a very satisied former XP champion. I swore I wouldn't leave XP which still seemed to work fine unless it was for a true upgrade. I am using the Win7 Ult64 RC and its pretty amazing. Example: I installed the analog Media Center Edition TV tuner from my MCE2005 box and hooked up a new DTA that comcast sent me (for free I might add) and when it booted I was worried because I didn't see the familiar "Found new hardware" dialog window. What happened? It was already installed and working. Comcast activated the DTA amd minutes later I realized why I stopped watching TV 10 years ago. 100 channels and nothing on worth watching! At least now I record the few things I do like and watch whenever I want streaming flawlessly through the Xbox 360. The MCE interface with Win7 and the 360 is really well done. Microsoft should have just picked a sexier name. Reply

My impressions of Windows 7 so far are good. The reviews are good, though Vista got some good reviews to early on. I think by far the biggest challenge 7 has is the terrible stigma that Vista created. Even now I'm trying to convince friends and co-workers that 7 is actually that much better then Vista.

Personally I couldn't imagine going back to Vista or XP any time soon.

So, I've just dumped my (not so) beloved XP and upgrading to 7 Pro 64bit (got some cheap deal, bought it at the same price of Home Premium), and here's my experience :

At first, I'm really impressed with the taskbar, the window preview is very intuitive. But the I find out that it's not updated constantly, quite annoying when I want to check my download progress). And the fact that the icon is cluttered in the left side of the bar is quite annoying, creating a large blank space in the center of the bar. Really, a dock is better I believe.

As a Windows XP user that haven't "played" with Vista / 7 beta/RC, I get confused with the UI, especially the Control Panel. The item categorization is very annoying and not consistent, clicking on a item on the left pane takes me to another category, pretty annoying when I want to "tune" every feature one-by-one to meet my personal preferences.

However, the most annoying thing in 7 is the way it handles multiple windows. As a web developer, when I'm working I usually open my primary target/test browsers (Firefox/Opera, no IE please, 20 acid3 score?) and a LOT of text editors tiled (can be up to 6 at once, usually SCiTE, I don't quite fond of "feature rich" IDEs). In Linux, usually I open the browser in one workspace (virtual desktop) and the editors in another, if I want to swicth, I can easly press CTRL+ALT+LEFT/RIGHT. In 7, after I tiled my editors, whenever I switch to my browser, my tile setup is broken (click on the SCiTE button only open 1 window, I need all at once :( ). I'll buy another monitor(s) next week and lets see what'll happen.

Indeed there's some apps that do workspace in 7, but I'm just too lazy and don't want to clutter up my 7 setup anyway. Linux will still be my primary workhorse.

All things aside, the performance of 7 is pretty good on my average system (Athlon II X4 / 4 GB / 5750). Well, my main reason for upgrading to 7 is to play games anyway (DX11). Altough being a quite avid Linux users I still can't understand those "purist" that games on Linux, unless they're playing 1000+ variations of solitaire.

For the UAC, I've set it to the highest level, annoying? I don' think so, being a Linux users, I love the sudo & "passworded" UAC to begin with. Maybe it's a bit annoying when you're setting up your system and installing apps at first, but once it's set, I don't see that many UAC again. What's so annoying by adding just a single click to install stuff?

But still, really, when will Microsoft dumb that NTFS and create a much better files system that doesn't need to defrag & checked?

And it doesn't handle my "unique" EvDO modem pretty well (I still blame the modem manufacturer for shitty windows driver thought...), it get disconnected randomly and pretty hard to reconnect (need to reboot). Come on guys! In Linux is just a single (maybe 2) click to reconnect!

And not too forget, that Nanami Madobe official 7 OS Tan is pretty appealing for anime lover like me, the system voice is just so cute :P

tl;dr :
IMHO, Windows 7 is the next great OS Microsoft launches after XP. It performs good for most people, have great gaming possibility (DX11), but just won't cut it to be my main workhorse. Oh, and no bluescreen yet, seems pretty stable :) Reply

NTFS has been on many other operating systems since . . .Windows NT :P

I do agree with UAC however. User account control is welcome in my book, and like you said; once you install applications, is no hindrance at all. e.g. you install an application, you click "sure, let it install", then that is it. Annoying ? No where near as annoying as having to manually remove any level of difficulty of viruses( because your wonderful anti virus application has no idea how ). And before any one says anything. ALL AV apps have this problem occasionally.

Directx 10 + adds very little to any gaming experience. Especially for those of us who use laptops that have no discrete graphics. Reply

Oh, and you bluescreen in Windows XP ? That is likely a hardware / driver issue.

I have an XP pro system that has had uptimes of half a year, and the *only* reason why it is not longer is because of driver updates, or Windows updates that *require* a reboot. Otherwise, said system could have had a much longer uptime.

Just like any other OS. You *must* research which hardware will run best under it for the optimal experience. Windows is by far not alone here. Reply

About the preview window: Afaik it doesn't update at all (at least when I was updating something in VMware running windows it didn't do anything). But that has probably technical reasons: Hidden windows do not get redrawn, if you would do that, you would consume quite some performance for a rather small effect.

WMP does not have the OGG codecs installed, so you either install them yourself or use another media player (the reason for this are probably some legal issues, but yes it should have some more codecs)

The tiled windows and co: Not a big problem for me, but yes the windows should at least remember their correct position and not pop up anywhere on the screen after minimalizing them.. annoying

PS: Exactly what has defraging to do with the file system? If you don't have enough continous space for a file it has to be splitted. You'll always get better performance from a HDD if your file is continous, you can try to minimize fragmentation (and different fs do better or worse, no question) but it's impossible to avoid it without moving data around.
There's a reason why ext4 will have a online defragmentation ;)

Um, the window previesw absolutely *do* update in realtime. Progress bars for file download update, and if you are watching a video in your browser, you can see the video update in the window preview as well. Reply

...the only time I can get the preview to *not* update in real-time is when I have explicitly minimized the window I want to preview. I practically never do that in Win 7, because the improved taskbar makes it really unnecessary (which is probably why I never noticed the cases where the preview would not be updated). Reply

Every time windows releases a new version the naysayers go " I WILL NEVER UPGRADE!" Their loss i suppose. Window XP was a great OS. Was it as good as Vista? Not at all as long as you had the hardware to support the OS. No dated systems would not run it and that was its downfall. I built a system for Vista and i had no issues at all with it at release. Windows 7 is much improved with some cool new things. Sorry i like the coolness factor in computing. The only difference between installing Windows 7 and Vista other then 7 was much faster was that every piece of hardware had W7 drivers already.

Everything on my computer worked at first boot to include my wireless hotspot. Mac can still waste their money on TV commercials. We live in a PC world that will and Mac like Linux will just be small time which is ok as an option. MS did a great job this time as far as i can tell. Reply

Compared to XP, Vista was an abortion. Vista may have had an updated Architecture, and things like UAC ( I actually like UAC; it really is not all that intrusive ). But everything that was supposed to make Vista better was not working, or was not functioning correctly. Just as one example, the new TCP/IP stack was supposed to increase Gigabit networking performance. Instead, it made it worse.

Then, you have processes like the trusted computing process that can not even be disabled without all but disabling the operating system. The OS will run, but you can not doing anything with it other than look at it. Microsoft, and its partners have no right to tell us what we can run, and when. No matter if it is illegal, or not. That is a mater for our individual governments . . . to govern. And yes, I have found at least one legitimate reason to have this process disabled.

However, on the other hand it is not all that terrible. At least not as terrible as all the BS spread all over the net. Likenesses made to Windows ME are purely absurd. It is functional, and it is stable, and hell, it technically is more secure out of the box. That is for users who have no clue.

I personally only use Vista because a laptop I bought came with it. Eventually I will retrograde to Windows XP *only* because of the gaming performance difference. You know what though ? I Beta Testes Vista since the beginning, I know Windows XP ( Pro ) very well, and I *know* what I want. Does this make Windows XP less secure ? Not for me, but *your* millage may vary.

Windows7 AND Vista *BOTH* outperforming Windows XP in Directx 9 titles . . .? Something tells me someone, or something is not right. I had done all my own testing from Vista Beta, to RC, and it was *ALWAYS* slower in Directx 9 games compared to XP. Even if only by a frame or two a second. A lot were 7-10 FPS slower. Right now, I am playing a 5 year old + game in Vista that constantly stutters . . . Something that ran fine on current hardware 5 years ago.

It would not surprise me if Video card manufactures are doing something to their hardware, and / or drivers. It is not like this sort of thing has not happened in the past. Maybe, it is just a matter of implementing new technology, that just happens to work with the newer OSes. But I doubt it.

The network performance increases are something that were *supposed* to come with Vista, and honestly annoys me more than impress. Only because I had to wait for the next iteration of Windows to see this improvement come to pass(and it really is not that huge of a difference really). Throughput figures would have been nice, instead of a timed test. The new TCP/IP stack is supposed to be there, as well as a load of other architectural improvements . . . but nothing improved between XP and Vista ( actually got worse ).

Now I have to say that security has never been an issue for me in Widnows XP. Then again, I am not some idiot, clicking yes on every dialog that pops up in my browser, or doing other equally stupid things. Any system is only as secure as the user using it. Period. Arbitrary code can be run on *ANY* system were the user is ignorant. There are many Linux boxen that have been rooted, and Linux has a much more robust kernel architecture. The difference here however is that these machines were mostly highly visible as servers. My point here is; Do not blame the OS, blame the user / administrator. Vista, or Windows 7 may be more advanced compared to XP, but they pale compared to Linux/Unix.

Lastly, I would like to dispel the belief that computers automatically get infected just by connecting to the internet . . . Downloading illegal ( and virus ridden ) software, visiting porn sites, and opening emails from people you do not know ( or even those you do know ) I would have to put high on the list of ways to become compromised. Joe hacker ( Joe script kiddie ? )may be looking for a way to compromise any number of highly visible servers for numerous reasons, but he has no idea who Joe blow even is. Let alone what Joe Blow's IP is. Even if he did, he would have to find a way to connect, which is virtually impossible on a hardened system. So sure, perhaps Windows compared to Linux, or any other Unix like operating system ( this includes OSX ) is architecturally inferior in this respect; It still can, and does happen to any operating system. But not *_just_because_* you've connected to the internet. Reply

*IF* you let your system respond to IDENT, then *maybe*. However, this is *not* just because you connected to the internet. This is because you connected to the internet, Joe Hacker was looking to exploit you(and others), and because "you" did not harden your system. Browsers have nothing to do with this matter per se. What does have to do with this is getting an executable on a machine in hopes of exploiting it. Using Internet Explorer was just a means to accomplish that end.

Now do you care to know how Sasser was caught ? Those of us who *know* which processes are running all the time, and that 99% CPU utilization is far from expectable most of the time. e.g. those of us who know what processes we run, and how much CPU we *should* be using at any given time / situation.

Still, this really is not that much different from exploiting Apache on a Linux server. Only difference is delivery ... only. Now *if* Apache were sand boxed . . .

By the way, many of *us* were never affected by Sasser. That is, those of *us* who pay attention. Reply

And what were XP's settings out of the box? And how many people were infected by just those two? Dumbass.

My point about sandboxing IE was apart from the previous point. In my experience, it is the primary vector for infection. And there have been exploits that allowed infection when visiting "safe" sites that had been compromised by yet another security flaw. If browsers were sandboxed, 99% of problems would be solved. Microsoft is slowly moving in that direction. Reply

If I sell you a car, and you crash into something because you had no experience driving; Does that make the car unsafe ? No. It means you the operator should have learned how to operate a vehicle before driving. Now, no, I do not think a computer user should be licensed to operate their own computers; But I *do* think it is their responsibility to learn how to operate one the way they intend it to be used. Does that make one operating system or another insecure ? No.

Vista since beta has touted a sand boxed browser; That is even before anyone else implemented it into their browsers. Microsoft does things the way they do because they understand that the average user does not want to spend hours/days/months learning how to use a computer( when perhaps they should).

If you design a car, and it catches fire because you located the gas tank next to the engine, that makes it unsafe. Sure, the buyer could relocate the gas tank themselves, but that doesn't change the fact that *your* design was unsafe. Further, if the car flips over routinely during normal use, it doesn't matter that you could take more precautions when you take corners. The design has still failed.

The browser is not even remotely sandboxed in Vista or 7. Microsoft *did* decide to sandbox silverlight (both in the browser and standalone), and I think they will do the same with the browser in the next iteration of windows. UAC helps a bit, but with the browser becoming as an application platform, sandboxing is a necessity.

You are intentionally blowing things out of proportion to make things sound worse than they really are. If you change how or when a service runs, this is nothing like relocating a gas tank. That would be like removing the service, and replacing it with another.

That, and, you really know what *smart* security freaks do ? They do things like make a USB bootable copy of their OS, so they can scan their OS drive while unmounted. Or, they run ridiculously impossible to setup setups like SELinux. The latter here is probably less smart, and just more geeky.

As I read through this I can just imagine some of you holding your O/S boxes. Stroking them lovingly as you hug them in your arms.

It all comes down to $$$ I think. If you have a piece of crap machine and have no cash or are one of those historian fanboys refusing to get rid of that TRS80, then sure keep DOS as the best os ever!! :P

If all you do is surf and use productivity apps, no need to upgrade from XP, I can see that.

If your needing a new upgrade and the new O/S's will not run on your rig. OK Stay on XP.

But you can not blame others that have good jobs and enjoy the life of the Enthusiast getting bleeding edge hardware and moving to the newest O/S.

I enjoy this very thing, it's fun getting the latest tech (in intervals). And nothing is more enjoyable (as far as computers)than installing that latest O/S and learning all about it's operation and putting it through its paces.

I like XP for what it is but I like Vista and 7's interface much better (it's pretty). :P

I do have a quad-boot on my system Win7 (primary O/S) then Vista then XP and then Linux, just in case I need them. You never can tell in the x86 world.

I'm prepped for anything.

Win 7 having added features of DX11 Direct Compute I think thats cool to do away with proprietary physics. I hope Nvidia didnt pay too much for Ageia.

I have never seen such a lackluster launch for something this big. Even mediocre cellphones we'll never us from companies we've never heard from have greater PR and fanfare to their releases. Still, W7 is great so far!

The graphs of Anandtech differ too much with my own experiences!
In many cases I think they made up the graphs by random or choice, rather than by actual testing.

I tested Win7 RC1 on my laptop, and it performs similar to XP, but not as snappy. It also runs hotter, and battery life suffered compared to XP.
Under Vista SP1 my laptop suffered A LOT on the battery life!!!
Win XP: 5,5Hours
Win 7: ~5hours
Vista: ~4,3 hours

In the tests done above it almost seems like Vista uses less battery than XP, which is just plain stupid and idiotic to claim that!

My experiences differ much, and like before I do believe that Anandtech is a tech site with biased reviews and opinions.
For this it is worse than Tomshardware, in that tomshardware can be biased, but it's articles always go together with the reality.

My experience is that anandtech pushes Nvidia and Intel,and now Win7.
Even from the time when AMD was clearly a better purchase in both graphics cards and processors, they still focused on Intel; and on multiple occasions twist graphs to their benefit!

This is a serious accusation, not my opinion alone anymore, but of many, and it has come to a point where it became too obvious...
Even with their article about "Internet Explorer 8 uses less power than Firefox"-article,
Well I've researched, and found that Internet Explorer 8 running a flash game had a lower FPS than Firefox.
I even took it further, on a T5500 CPU with XP, 2Gig RAM and Firefox, I had an average of 15fps.
Same game, Vista SP1, T7500 with 4Gig Ram, and IE8, I had an average of 4fps!!!
No wonder they are using lower power.

But that aside, which was probably the last article I could not get shoved through my throat, I think I've seen enough of Anandtech, and would recommend all users to read less biased reviews on tomshardware.com!!!

You'll notice immediately that they both offer different perspectives, and in my experience tomshardware has always been closer to the reality than Anandtech! Reply

Tom's Hardware was once a great place especially back in the Thomas Pabst days. However, lately there is no reason to go there since they fired Ben, Travis, and Rob. For fuck's sake Tom's Games is now all flash games, WTF (I think there are a lot of people that are sore about this). I don't know where to go to get good game reviews anymore. If someone has any suggestions please let me know. Tom's got rid of their most unique content and is now little more than a cheap imitation of its former self, it's really sad actually. I hope Anand doesn't sell out to some shitty corporation. I wish I would have known about Anandtech back in the 90's. Its just too bad that they really don't cover games that well since there are so many SHIIIIITY review sites out there. Reply

You have to be joking right? While Toms has improved recently, their analysis is far from competing with AT and they tend to be overly biased in several areas. Did you read Tom's Win7 article? It basically said XP users now have a reason to upgrade but they did not run any tests on XP. Tell me, how is that being closer to reality?

It is funny to see all of these comments saying the Tom's Win7 article was better and it basically was nothing more than a PCWorld article. Apparently you have not read the latest AMD reviews here, they are all positive, fair, and recommend their products. Reply

Now, I'm neither a Wintard or Freetard, but there's no balance whatsoever everytime I see them bring Ubuntu into the comparisons. I often wonder whether they broke their Linux install with the numbers they obtain.

I don't have Win7 yet, but there's no way Ubuntu 9.04 boots that slow. I've seen it boot faster on 3 yr old laptops. I've not tried Ubuntu 9.10 yet (I'm mainly a Debian user), but from al the tests I've seen, it should blow away Win7,Vista,XP in the boot speed department.

I agree that laptop battery life on Linux isn't as good as Windows out of the box, but a install a couple of apps (available on most distro repositories) and most people can get equal or better life on Linux. My Asus eeePC can run 8+hrs with on Arch Linux after minimal tweaking (I never got that much from XP even when the battery was brand new).

I seriously hope AnandTech finds someone who knows Linux better (at least someone with comparable levels of knowledge that AnandTech seems to have with Windows). I've met highschool students with better Linux Know-how than this place... which is a shame, really, because other than that, I think very highly of AnandTech.

"I agree that laptop battery life on Linux isn't as good as Windows out of the box, but a install a couple of apps (available on most distro repositories)"
Well the vast majority of home users don't know which apps that would be and won't find out about them

And ArchLinux is a really sleek distribution, last time I checked the GUI wasn't even part of the standard installation. The same goes for self compiled kernels and similar things - certainly possibly but irrelevant for 99.99% of the users.

It's the out of the box performance that's interesting for the majority (after all they didn't do anything for Windows as well), the users who enjoy playing with their PC usually already use Linux and know the advantages. Reply

FWIW, I worked with a "Linux Guru" -- a Senior Linux guy at a big OEM heavily involved with the ArchLinux community -- and we worked to run some additional tests on the NV52. So far, we didn't manage anything significantly better, but you can probably blame ATI's drivers as much as anything. We'll be working to expand Linux coverage (with him doing more of the work) in the future.

Honestly, though, after spending the better part of two weeks going through numerous settings and trying to tweak ArchLinux to get significantly better battery life... well, I'm just not seeing it. I'm sure it's possible to do with the right hardware (i.e. NOT ATI!), but Linux is hardly a panacea. If you want good mobility, it's going to be tons easier for 99.999% of users to skip Linux (or get a netbook with Linux pre-installed). Reply

"The concern we have is that all of these auto-elevating programs are an obvious target for a local privilege escalation attack to accomplish something similar, if not the same. Imagine finding a way to make the Display control panel execute a 3rd party application with admin privileges, for example."

Well, the same could be done in Vista... The control panel applets aren't auto-elevated, but anyone who plans on doing anything useful with them is going to elevate them anyway. So UAC in Win7 should be as effective in Win7 as it was in Vista, granting administrative privileges only to applications that really need it.

Also, the fact that UAC is less annoying is going to be a huge security improvement on its own since fewer users are likely to turn it off. Many users are good enough with computers to figure out how to turn off UAC, but don't know enough to realize that they compromise security by doing this. They think it's condescending, always questioning the user. In fact, the prompts are there to prevent malicious software from gaining sufficient privileges to compromise the computer system, not to prevent the user from performing the tasks he/she wants. That's why Server 2008, as well as OSX and almost every Linux distribution has a similar feature. Reply

Of all things, multiplayer pc gaming is not mention in windows 7 (10,000 beta testers they say), and apparently Punkbuster is the defacto use for pc multiplayers and the majority of the developers.
Consumers will like windows 7, the level of shine and sleek looking is pretty close to MacOs even themes,background on win7 is enjoyable compare to the years of dull blue windows.
but what the crap, how long will i have to wait for a patch for this punkbuster.
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it seems to me that if Linux did what MS does with marketing, we'd have a new major Linux version every year :-) (under Linux I mean a distro like Suse or Ubuntu).

too much hype about too little a change. basicaly they are milking $$$ out of people for performance that should have been in Vista and naming it Windows 7 ... yeah ... More like Vista SP1 that this should have been.

anyway I don't see a reason to upgrade from XP (moving to Linux completely on my next new HW build anyway).

Also, to the folks complaining about missing codecs, mail client and whatnot. MS is essentialy stupid. If they followed the Linux distro model, they could just sell the core OS to OEMs and let them create distributions with any applications the OEMs like. This way they get around the anti-trust issues and also get rid of supporting the distributions. but guess they are too stupid to do that. Reply

In 1995 I remember talking to an older guy that worked at Radio Shack about Windows. He said he'd never upgrade from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 because he said the memory usage was wasteful, and because even the OK buttons took up 16K of memory each.
Over the years have I often wondered if he is still running Windows 3.1.

Windows 7 was released and the people with AMD systems running RAID setups were in shock, no RAID drivers for windows 7. This is an issue. Today there has been RAID drives posted at the AMD site, with the posting date back dated to the 22nd.

I had tried for hours try to get this new OS installed on the 23rd, but none of the available drivers were accepted by Win7. There for I could not install with a RAID setup. After Googling for a bit I realized I was not the only one, this was a far bigger problem.

My initial excitement of enjoying the weekend with the new OS did not take place. It is now monday and I am wondering when I will take another stab at another install attempt.

How many businesses do you know run RAID on their desktops? I'd like to know myself because in the thousands of workstations I have built over the past years only a handful ever used any form of RAID. And those were RAID 1 and I am convinced the engineers who ordered them only did it to say they have RAID.

"Certainly someone is going to bite my head off for this, but I don’t think Microsoft should have made such a fundamental change to UAC. More casual users may not have been fond of how Vista or UAC Level 3 handle security, but it was a more secure choice than Level 2."

What are you doing complaining about security while running as admin?

UAC is about social engineering. That it acts like a security feature is because if you want to engineer towards the security model with limited accounts, you have to make the administrator account act like one.

The standard access tokens and UAC nags used by the administrator account are not a part of the tiered model's administrator level -- they're there to mimic the experience of a standard user account so programmers will actually program for standard user account access. (and so users will get used to the prompts for elevation that come with operating as a standard user.)

To obsess over a reduction in limited user -type security in the administrator account is to miss the point that that's not even aligned with Microsoft's security philosophy. Their model (along with everbody else) has been tiered privileges, not somehow patching all possible vulnerabilities out of root.

Vista's default UAC was pretty much universally reviled. People wanted fewer nags, meaning less limited-access -like behavior. But you can't have auto-elevation without a reduction in security.
Could Microsoft do a better job securing the hole they opened to god-mode from the administrator account? Yes. Would the amount of effort be insane, judged in light of the fact that an administrator account is supposed to be god mode? Yes.
Should Microsoft rewrite the Win7 kernel so that these apps run in protected space that restricts them to pre-authorized actions and disallows daughter processes just so the lazy and power-mad among us can dismiss the logical security scheme and continue to run as Administrators 24/7? There's always going to be system vulnerability from the administrator account -- that's kinda its purpose. Instead of trying to secure the unsecurable, Microsoft is trying to get people to embrace a better model.

And at least they took out the obvious stupidity, like MSPaint auto-elevating. (You can delete anything [like C:\WINDOWS] from its file manager when elevated.)

And, for the record, I'm one of those lazy and power-mad who run as Admin 24/7. But I'm also on a non-critical machine.
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Really need to show how much better 7 is in a domain environment. Vista is a nightmare in the workplace, especially with networks. Vista has really slow file transfers, slow authentication, really bad switching from wired to wireless. Constant time outs from explorer or Outlook. Errors trying to update the OS. List goes on and on.
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Sounds to me like you may have other issues if you are having timeouts in Outlook and Windows explorer and cant update the clients. We have about 30% of our user base using Vista 32. They have for the most part been pretty solid. The biggest issue was the person before me on the initial batch bought machines with 1GB of ram. /shake head

At home I only need Windows to work on some MS Office 2007 documents. I can live without the Windows 7 new features. So here is the fastest Windows and the safest you can have: Use Linux + Virtual Machine (Ubuntu 9.04 x64 and Virtualbox 3.08 in my case). The VM have WinXP + SP3, auto updates. After that, I configure XP so that it can no longer access the Internet. Results: a fast and low resource Windows (only XP and the few programs I need, zero anti virus). Unlike its numerous XP fellows this one is unattackable.
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Anandtech really needs a dedicated person on its team with better knowledge of linux. It's a computer site, and I'd compare the level of linux no-how to that of a high-school student who's been playing around with it a bit. Ubuntu 9.10 has in essence been around for a while now, and I'm surprised no one's even bothered to look at it. Also you can set ubuntu to get A LOT better battery life numbers. Just my $.02 Reply

Maybe because its garbage? Maybe because the application base of Linux is almost nonexistent? Maybe because it barely supports any of the latest hardware? Maybe because the ABI situation is a clusterfuck? Maybe because those battery-life improving tweaks involve removing some functionality? Reply

I found some 25% off coupons still lurking around the web back in August and got myself a Technet Plus subscription. For $261, I got one license of Win7 Ultimate one of Premium, one of Professional, and more importantly, a MAK (multiple-activation key) for using Enterprise.

That's not including the licenses for Office 2007 and a ton of other MS products. Well worth the price and at the end of the year's membership, your licenses are still valid --just keep copies of your .ISOs and keys. Subscription renewal prices are also lower than first-time. Reply

With respect to hibernating... don't the Vista/Win7 64-bit laptops have 4 gigs of RAM they have to store, while XP 32-bit only has ~3 gigs accessible? Seems like that would artificially affect the performance.

I should also mention that Win7 has a lot more features available to developers such as a biometric and touch screen support. The touch support is already being used by HP on their touchsmart computers.

I think the fact that Win7 was such a modest update (compared to the XP to Vista transition) is why its been getting such great reviews. Vista SP2 is a solid OS, and to depart too far from that would be risky.

I used Vista when it first came out and it had terrible disk performance and buggy drivers... I can see why people didn't like it. Since SP1 its been a pretty solid, fast OS. However its never been able to recover its tarnished reputation. Reply

Well, then you really didn't need to read the article for advice, did you?

That statement was probably poorly worded, as at Vista launch there were definitely reasons to stick with XP, and I'd guess there are a decent number of people like me, who skipped Vista as by the time SP1 was out, it was known that 7 would be coming soon and not to bother stopping at Vista in between. Reply

On the laptop page, should that be "second to resume from hibernate"? If not, then I dont think its really that important a statistic, I'd be happy for my Desktop to take twice as long to hibernate, if it resumed in half the time :) Reply

I switched from XP to 7 when I got my free RTM from MSDNA and have been using it since then. Imho the usability improvements (new taskbar, search, that neat window snap stuff,..) and the overall look are really worth the upgrade and I'd buy the retail version anytime.
I also took the chance to get a Intel SSD, so I'd have to install the OS in any case.. win/win situation ;)

XP was nice while it lasted, but it shows its age and XP64 was never really up to top, so it was just time to change. Reply

I have to COMPLETELY disagree about OS X having the better interface. At best, it's personal preference, but I can think of a ton of examples where Windows-even older versions of Windows-have a more logical way of doing things. (Just two examples-it's much easier to create/manage files from Explorer, whereas OS X more forces you to use the program you want, and then save the file out through the program-Windows does either way almost equally well. Another-save dialog boxes in Windows have long had FAR more functionality with being able to manage other files while saving-something I end up making use of near daily.)

OS X's font rendering continues to be horrific too, and it STILL doesn't play Blu Rays!

But...I do like the changes made to the task bar on Windows 7, for the most part. It mostly is a "best of both worlds" approach, although it doesn't do EVERYTHING as well as what it's replacing. (I miss the classic Start Menu too, which had more functionality than the new one, but some of the new Taskbar changes help mitigate that.)

I'm glad Anandtech continues to champion UAC. One of the first things I did after installing 7 was to change it back to it's highest setting. I'm baffled by the resistance to it. For one thing, OS X has done THE SAME THING since it's inception-which is a GOOD thing. For another, you don't see it very often, and we should all want that extra layer of security.

I've seen a self professed "computer expert" going on about how *HE* doesn't need UAC-and completely not getting it that we probably benefit MORE from it than the average user, since we know if something we're doing would need to have prompted that. He wasn't getting it that it's a protection from malware, etc. Reply

I completely disagree with a lot of the conclusions in this article. I think Anandtech is a little blind to the performance benefits of Windows 7 over Windows Vista because all the equipment they use for testing is brand new and high end. The bulk of laptop users have machines that cost $800 or less. In the last year Netbook sales and lower end laptops have become the norm. This review completely ignores those changes in the market place. I have installed Windows 7 on lots of lower end laptops that previously had Vista and in 100 percent of the cases the users have commented on how much faster Windows 7 feels.

If your an HTPC user then Windows 7 is a must IMHO. I've been using 7 since January and I have yet to see a BSOD. I definitely can't say the same for my Vista machine (it's 7 now too). Reply

I agree, I think this article is incomplete for the most part. As I commented on the 2nd page Tom's hardware does have some sort of test for this. I don't know because I only read the conclusion. They seem to be in agreement with us about Windows 7 being good on older PCs, especially laptops.

I've converted many laptops as well and they are definitely running better with Windows 7. Reply

Toms pretty much had the same conclusion as Anandtech. Here is a quote from their conclusion:

"From the benchmarker’s standpoint, the change from Windows Vista to Windows 7 is simply a matter of documentation."

I wish someone would quantify the "snappy" feeling or the "it feels faster" they get from Windows 7 because I'm not seeing a compelling reason to move from Vista from either article on the two sites. Reply

I absolutely love Win7. I've installed the RC on my Thinkpad T61p and it's a real pleasure to use it compared to Vista. It's more responsive, not like Vista sluggish experience. However, the ACPI driver for the T61p don't work right. The screen doesn't dim and power management don't work right. I think that's really odd, as it's been working right under Vista and Linux.

Also, I wonder if the NAS test was done using a Large Packet enabled NAS. It do make a huge difference on networking gear that support it. Reply

Did you happen to do any benchmarking or "general user responsiveness" when you upgraded the systems? I have upgraded 3 systems since Windows 95 and in every case I ended up reformatting and doing a clean install; not because of a hardware/software issue, but rather because some unknown demon made the systems chug.

I've seen this same issue with the move from XP SP2 to SP3 on my dad's computer (in this case to the point where we actually rolled back to SP2). In that instance it is possible the extra security features/etc. on an older system that just couldn't take it, but in the other instances it seemed to be a major problem.

One of the systems that I did the upgrade install on was my personal system. I'm not going to publish any numbers since they aren't rigorous enough, but before and after testing didn't reveal any differences in performance. It continues to perform just as well as any other Win7 system I have. Reply

Had been using XP64 for about 4 years and lived through all its teething problems. Had been totally satisfied except that with some programs it couldn't regulate the RAM efficiently. I have 6 gigs of RAM and would ofter run out while using some apps. With 7 Ultimate I can watch an H264 movie, have FF open and encode a movie all at the same time and have RAM left over. For me Windows 7 was the fix. Reply

I'll go out on a limb and say that anyone who feels comfortable configuring POP3/SMTP settings would also be comfortable downloading the free mail client from MS (or Thunderbird, etc.). Businesses will likely have MS Office installed (including Outlook). Non-technical users generally use webmail.

So, the only group I can come up with who would want it installed by default is tech-savvy users without Office, that prefer MS's free desktop client over webmail, and don't have admin rights to install it themselves or access to IT support to install it for them. Reply

Gary - Whatever happened to the P55 motherboard reviews and round-up articles you mentioned last month? Are they still on the way? I think we've seen 3 or 4 P55 motherboards reviewed so far at Anandtech. Are you still going to review the others?

It's not so much the performance that's important or unknown, since they're all relatively similar. It's the technical specs comparisons, the board layout images and commentary, any issues you experienced while testing with them, etc. Would love to see the round-ups. Reply

They are coming shortly. We went back and purchased 8 retail boards to do additional testing on the Foxconn socket compared to the Lotes/Tyco Amp. I have finished that testing and guess what, no changes on air or water, plus it appears the revised Foxconn socket is certainly working better, not perfect, but much better. Reply

Why is downloading it for free such a big deal? This way you aren't stuck with whatever version came with the OS. This way MS can upgrade it and make it easier to stay with a frsh mail client. I really don't get the complaints about that here. It also makes it easier for MS to avoid lawsuits. Can you really blame them for wanting to do all this? Besides, I don't know 1 single solitary user who uses Outlook Express, not one. They all use either Outlook or webmail. Personally I love using plain old Gmail. It's simple to use, and travels with me everywhere I go. Reply

I missed out on the $50 upgrade deal a couple months ago (literally forgot by 1 day) but since I have Vista and my parents really don't want/need to upgrade their systems I think we could all swallow $150 for the 3 user license (my mom's laptop would especially benefit).

My question is since we don't live in the same house/town is that in violation of the family deal? I'd use one license for my computer and the other 2 for my parents computers.

Thanks for this likely simple question, but I'm not about to read a EULA! Reply

The $30 student deal is a great one. However, I would caution people against using the Digital River purchase, it's not a downloadable .iso but rather a "box" file that can't easily be made into a bootable DVD. It's a particularly poor choice for those migrating from a 32-bit OS to a 64-bit as the files often can't even be unpacked. There's more info. online at sevenforums, slickdeals and elsewhere. Microsoft offers the deal directly by calling 1.877.696.7786 (mailed DVD for $35 plus tax), this is probably a better option for most to avoid the hassles. Reply

No, they have it right. It's a lower is better test. Win7 completes the task in 75% and 66% of the time as XP and Vista respectively. That's 25% and 34%; 100% faster would mean the task is done instantaneously, and 51% faster would mean it's done in less than half the time. Reply

Hi there, I have a question/proposition for including those DPC latency issues Windows 7 is suffering from...

I recently installed it and noticed the unsocially high values in the DPC latency meter. It manifested as awful audio drops and clicks in my DAW applications.

It seems there is some issue with power management drivers in Vista and 7, and while 7 seems a little better compared to Vista, the latency is still very problematic. The very same configuration in Windows XP is running at very low DPC latency, about 20 us (micro), while in 7 the machine idles at about 300 us, and even the most basic processor load results in spikes up to 3000-4000 us, which for an Average Joe that's watching movies or browsing the net will not be an issue, but for real time processing of audio or video, or capturing, it is critical, and the system is basically useless with Windows 7

So I guess this article is a nice place to investigate this problem, that seems to affect PCs with UPS or just a regular laptop, maybe given enough publicity the issue will be resolved. Reply

ASIO drivers take care for the audio part for you!
I have little to no experience using live capture of video, but perhaps you will prefer a Linux or MacOs for that purpose (if video Latencies are that important). Reply

Its nice reading an honest account of the oft-marginal differences between Vista SP2 and Win7. I think far too much is made with regard to Win7's improvements, and while I do like Win7 for what it is, I agree its far less of a change from Vista than Vista was from XP.

Basically it comes down to there's no really compelling reason to upgrade from Vista to Win7, but at the same time, there's no reason not to other than cost. Win7 is as most of your graphs show, about 5% better than Vista across the board with some UI tweaks, its a new and shiny toy with a new box and packaging.

As for a question you had about built-in e-mail programs:

quote:But what I don’t get is why there’s any reason good enough for Windows to not come with an email client at all. It’s 2009, why is there an operating system being released without an email client? I only hope that OEMs are adding email clients to their prebuilt computers, otherwise there may be some very confused Windows 7 users as people start snapping up new machines.

Its just more of the same annoying anti-trust concerns that prevent Microsoft from bundling useful software that would benefit the end-consumer for the sake of fair competition. Its the same reason they can't bundle any variety of other useful and often free programs out there like codec packs, anti-virus, compression software, blu-ray playback, imaging software, photo viewers etc.

MS can't bundle them with the OS to give the other providers that offer them for free a chance to compete, and in the end it just ends up being a less pleasant experience for the end-user. This is probably the biggest difference imo compared to a Mac, with Mac this basic functionality you expect just works without having to search high and low for a working solution you expect to work for free out of the box.

It's interesting that no review I've yet read has mentioned that, if you turn off the GUI boot in msconfig to see the text status, Windows 7 identifies itself as version 6.1 compared to Vista's 6.0.

I think that says a lot about the differences between Windows 7 and Vista. I'm very happy for the improvements, and I'm really starting to like the "peek" functions (way more functional than Expose). But it does feel more like an update than a whole new OS. Reply

This was explained in a lot of usergroups and similar events in which MVPs and similar took the time to describe the numbering behing Windows 7.

It turns out many software vendors write and compile their applications with conditions set to limit the versions of Windows on which their software run. In this case many developers who wrote software for Vista added a mask such that any revision of Vista (6.x) would run fine.

If Microsoft went forward in their usual way and changed the version of the kernel to 7.0 a lot of software would just brake or refuse to run even though the Operating System supported all their operations normally. To prevent this from happening Windows 7 uses a version number of 6.1. No one wants another Vista, we want Microsoft to look good from now on.

At the same time many Microsoft Evagelists, MVPs and similar have gone out of their way promoting the idea of not using this kind of technique and use feature discovery so programs can keep running as new versions of the operating system are introduced in the market.

Practices such as using newer APIs are being encouraged among software vendors and hopefully they will take the hint and make things easy for users. It is understandable they want to sell new copies with new OSs but they should do this on top of new functionality, not just some re-compilation and re-package.

On this sense, Microsoft often goes out of its way to accomodate some develoeprs requirements such as including software-specific and sometimes software-version-specific logic to accomodate functionality. This bloats the OS and starting from Windows 7 this will no longer be the case.

Check the engineering Windows 7 blog for more information on this, however, your local usergroup should be able to provide more details about this.

Microsoft already replied to this: version 6 is kept for compatibility purposes, since pretty much everything that worked in Vista should need no changes to run in Windows 7.

I see no reason to do major kernel changes on each release: they did what they had to and cleaned up the 16-bit remains in Vista, and just tweaked some rough edges for Windows 7. And it worked out pretty well: even if it's not much faster than Vista, it looks like it, and in the end, that's what matters to pretty much everyone. Reply

I think that's pretty much the point. From a technical standpoint, it's a service pack plus GUI changes. From a marketing and user perception standpoint, there's a strong desire to move away from Vista. So, they went with Windows 7 instead of Windows Vista SP2. Reply

"you’re never going to stuff something like Windows 7 in to the performance characteristics of an 8 year-old OS that forgoes real security and predates wireless networking."

This is partially true, but only because Microsoft makes it so. They release a monstrosity of an OS that runs like a dog, tell everyone it's better and faster than the previous release, and tra la la, most follow along. They could have developed an OS that was more secure, less of a performance nightmare, and satisfied the wants and needs of it's users. But that's not Microsoft's only goal. They have all sorts of other interests that get in the way of that goal, and subjugate "what is good for the user" to what MS thinks is good for MS.

Regarding pre-dating wireless networking, I hardly think that Windows XP was more than an apple in Bill's eye when the world was beginning to adopt wireless networking. Apple had the airport in 1999, and Windows XP shipped with wireless support built in.

Windows XP itself was no great performer. It only looks that way when you compare it with Vista and 7. Another inaccuracy in the article is your portrayal of Snow Leopard as a minor update compared with 7. I am still testing SL for customers, but the performance gains are incredible considering Leopard was already fast, the management tools are vastly improved, and almost all pieces have shown very nice improvements (the network-awareness is phenomenal, finding computers, printers, etc. extremely quickly, and with none of the halting behavior of Windows when navigating).

Also, you mention that XP is insecure. I totally agree with you on this. I spend a good portion of my time cleaning infections from XP machines. However, I spend just as much time (proportionally by installed base) cleaning them from Vista. Are you saying that someone who is using Windows 7, and visits the NY Times on the wrong day won't be infected? Or someone won't end up with the latest version of "Personal Antivirus Pro 2009" or some other dreck?

I would be happy if 7 doesn't suffer from these problems. That's a lot more time for me to spend with my family. But I have a feeling that the real security problems that real people face every day with XP and Vista will remain on 7. I just hope some of the better tools will be updated as well. Reply

All this blabla about performance... both vista and 7 are at least as fast if not faster on quite a few things than XP. Its a fact. Everyone who denies this and still claims otherwise should perhaps not spend so much time with computers, as it seems it is a waste of time.

As for your example with the infections of vista and 7. Yes, I'm sure he would be saying that because its true. I dont know what the fuck your people are doing with their machines, but at least a vista machine that wasnt "optimized" to become vulnerable to any type of attack, isnt going to be infected as easily as XP - ever. Reply

Upgraded from 32-bit XP to 64-bit Windows 7 Professional for $99 in the preorder sale. I find it $99 well spent. Good price for 8 years worth of upgrades, and since I never even tried Vista due to all the horror stories and XP being "good enough" for my usage patterns (mostly RTS/TBS/MMO gaming--not the DX10 FPS stuff), I find it a HUGE change (increased performance and all) and well worth the money. Basically I got to skip the Vista generation and pay less than Vista would've cost for a similar feature set thanks to the preorder sale and move of all the important (to me) features into Pro from the overpriced Ultimate.

I can see a bit why the article is so down on Windows 7, largely because of the prices available today. But at preorder prices, Windows 7 is a slam dunk. It's a shame Microsoft didn't make those the permanent upgrade pricing. Reply

I agree. MS should have kept the Home upgrade at $50. I'm not sure who's buying Pro, since it doesn't have many more features that a home user would be interested in. Business users are going to have a volume licensed Enterprise version. Reply

Microsofts Volume License since Vista imo has been a clusterfuck. Requiring an on site activation server with check ins ever 6 months or the OS locks you out. That really puts a level of complexity not needed in an OT admins life. Especially with remote users who literally never touch your network for years at a time.

Yet another superficial look at Windows 7. Not a word about the registry and it's egregious affect on stability and performance. Not a word about the malware fest that is still Windows. Nothing about Windows very poor utilization of multi-core procs and large amounts of memory. No, its all as if the only thing that matters about an OS is the UI. Is Anand the only one at Anandtech that has taken an operating system class? Is he the only one who knows anything about OS X? It would appear so.

Your brief "comparison" of Snow Leopard and Windows 7 was worse. Of course. It is not a minor upgrade at all unless..you only look at superficial things as you did the Windows 7 review. SL has had a few minor issues affecting a few people. Hardly "teething problems". The only differentiator between 7 and SL is now hardware? Unbelievable. When did Anandtech turn into CNET?

You can barely spell Linux apparently so I don't think we will see any kind of comparison there.

If you don't know anything about OS X or Linux then don't bother to mention ether in the future. Reply

While I can't support this tirade, I will say Anandtech definitely suffers in Mac and Linux areas. Then again, their slogan is "your source for hardware analysis and news", which I guess doesn't really warrant that it needs to be classed in those areas. Still, the latest Linux articles are August 2009, and then 2005! Reply

If thats all you got it isn't much. That is certainly a bug and a highly visible one. But it affects a tiny number of users who upgraded Leopard to Snow Leopard in a very specific way under a certain set of circumstances and even not all of them have the issue. Apple has a fix in 10.6.2 which will be out in a matter of days. To bring that up in the face of the yawning chasm of security vulnerabilities that is Windows 7 is pretty laughable. Reply

Once again, it's time you actually supported your statements with facts. What security chasm? Please cite vulnerabilities and extent to which OSX is not subject to them. And while you are at it, please explain how come it is that Mac OS got broken into faster when the compensation for the break in was the same between Mac OS and (at the time, but for all practical purposes immaterially) Vista [pwn2own 2009]. Oh, and MacOS was broken into twice to Vista's one time. So which again is more secure? Reply

MacOSX is far from the best Operating system out there, it has a tiny market share, lacks software/API compatibility, and usually comes with rather antiquated hardware, and cheap plastic looks. (Even the Aluminum bodied ones, look cheap and flimsy to me, despite them being of a solid build).

I usually avoid all Articles based around the Mac because it's completely pointless to read, I have never owned a Mac, I never want to own a Mac, I have used a Mac and hated every moment of it, not because of the "Brand" but because I have to "Search" for OSX variations of the software I use, in such a case the Operating system is useless to me.

Windows 7 is awesome, been using it since the early Beta's, It's like a "Fine Wine" version of Vista, it's Vista that got better with age. - I don't expect a Mac user to understand the difference's as they are generally limited in intellectual capability.

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What I REALLY wanted from this article is Windows 7's performance on something like the Atom 230/330 based processors so we can see how usable the Operating system is on such processors.
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I didn't say it was the best now did I? But it is certainly better than this band aided and scotch taped version of Vista. I don't have any particular idea of a "best" OS in mind because I work with all of them. I have for 20+ years and I am quite well paid for it. Whereas you still get an allowance from daddy.

Market share is no measure of how good something is. That is obvious.

Software/API compatibility? Meaning what exactly? I'd like to hear because I don't think you know.

Tell me one thing that is antiquated about Mac hardware? Plastic? What plastic? Your comments on the unibody are laughable. I'll leave it at that.

Oh you had to "search" for Mac software. That must have been difficult for you.

I understand you are just some teenager who doesn't know anything. But don't think everyone here is the same as you. Reply

Another moronic Mac user that knows nothing. All your points about about 7 are a joke. Chances are you have not even used it.
The only "malware fest" was windows XP. I've used Vista since release with UAC turned off - never got anything.
And yes 7 uses more RAM, as it's a real OS and not a toy, it supports hundreds of thousands of 3rd party hardware and software, it can do a lot more. This tends to increase the complexity of an OS.

If OSX was actually good enough for most people to use, it would be a security mess as hackers would actually bother to attack it, and theres noway it's as secure as Vista or 7 if it came down to that.
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"But what I don’t get is why there’s any reason good enough for Windows to not come with an email client at all. It’s 2009, why is there an operating system being released without an email client?"

But you see, that would be violating anti-competition laws and would reduce consumer choice. Bundling Windows Live Mail is clearly unfair to Mozilla Thunderbird, Opera Mail, and all the other email client providers out there!

Obviously, the solution is that Microsoft must implement a ballot screen into Windows so users can choose whether to use Windows Live Mail or another competing product. Yep. Reply

Bundling these apps was only an issue in Europe not in the U.S. It wasn't all of these apps ether. The biggest issue Microsoft regarding bundling is the browser and they still bundle that. So whatever Microsoft reason is for that it had nothing to do with bundling or anti-trust.

A bigger question is why in an OS released in 2009 do you still need to manually defrag, still need registry cleaners, layers of anti-malware, and various other 3rd party utilities just to make it usable and semi-reliable? Pretty sad. Reply

I prefer to do these things manually!
Automatic defrag in Vista and 7 is one of the major reasons for a degrading OS over time (in speed).
I prefer keeping control over many of the 'automatic' services,which somehow always seem to interfere with performance..
Ever played a game,and in the middle noticed a virusscan was happening on the background?
Or what about just silently reading a webpage, on the last of your battery of a laptop, and noticing how the HDD light flickers like crazy, making this annoying HDD sound while you're reading?

Those are the curses of the automatic tasks.
One of the first thing I did with XP and win98, when it got released,was disable the automatic task scheduler!
Some find automatic tasks a blessing, some a curse.

A Defrag on a normal system should be done twice or trice a year, not every day like Vista (provided if you stay above the 20% freespace). Reply

Vista/7 have I/O priorities. If the game needs to access the hard disk then the AV scanner (assuming it was written to take advantage of priorities) will pause. Should be little to no performance loss.

The default auto-defrag setting is once a week, not daily. I find it really helps with overall performance. Reply

1) Browser is much more essential for an average user, so by extension, if bundling the browser (a more essential component) is viewed as anti-competitive, it is certain that bundling less essential components would also be viewed as such. In that respect, it was completely reasonable to anticipate it. It is entirely silly / idiotic (you pick, I pick the latter), but it is not MS's doing, it's the EU regulators'. Bitch at them.

2) You don't need to manually defrag (it has been background since Vista)

3) You don't need registry cleaners

4) You don't need layers of malware protection and, factually, it is more difficult to compromise than OSX, that's been shown

5) You don't need various 3rd party utilities - difficult to guess here what you are talking about since no specific reference is made - but then again, that's how you bashers typically operate

6) It is one of the more reliable systems out there; again, please talk specifics. Since Vista, Windows very rarely crashes.

What is pretty sad is that morons such as yourself with clear misinformation are allowed to impact other people's opinions. Reply

I would like to see more tests on laptops if possible. The snappy UI of Windows more than makes up for it's performance/lack-there-of. This is especially true of replacing Vista. Regardless of the performance, Windows 7 has the driver and snappy-ness to warrant the replacement of XP and Vista.

"To that end, I certainly wouldn’t recommend running Win7 at the default UAC level for any computer connected to the internet."

That depends on the user, frankly, all you need is an updated OS and a firewall, and one should be resonably safe, those two things will in most cases limit attacks to the types where the user has to manually execute a file. People got by on XP without problems, Win 7 with UAC level 2 is much more safe than that. Of course there will be less skilled users who run into problems, but as a skilled user, one should be fine. Reply

"That depends on the user, frankly, all you need is an updated OS and a firewall, and one should be resonably safe, those two things will in most cases limit attacks to the types where the user has to manually execute a file."

No, because:

"And that’s a risky proposition when a UAC prompt may be all that’s left between malware executing and running amok or not."

No firewall or AV is going to protect you if all it takes is a brand new little trojan using this flawed security concept to gain highest privileges. And thats why I set UAC to level 4. I got used to it by having vista do the same for 2.5 years. Reply

IMO my biggest disappointment in Win7 was Microsoft gave into the XP whiners who love no security with an admin account. They tuned the thing down and gave the user the ability to elevate its protection. Personally I run with a user level account in Win7 and left the default settings. When Win7 shows up on our network Ill have to configure a GP to stick the thing at the highest setting and disable the ability of the users to change it.

But for mom and pop. They will either turn it off or get infected with something that disables it. The end result is basically XP level security which is a huge step backwards. Reply

Anand Effect
— For every mention of Apple and their products the number of people who complain in the comments about Apple, their products and AnandTech’s occasional focus on said products doubles exponentially. Reply

The magic word is migration. A clean install with nothing else is certainly fast. The installation didnt even take 25 minutes here. The hours to make everything the way I needed it to be afterwards without upgrading from vista, thats what counts. :) Reply

4.5 hours for an upgrade on a fast hard disk that held ~300GB of apps and data.
Butchered the drivers. Made a complete mess of the codecs. I would recomend the clean install since you will likely spend less time re-installing Apps than repairing the damage. Reply

I just don't understand why holdouts on XP like to argue how good it is in comparison to Vista... which it obviously is NOT. It seems they fail to realize that ALL OF US used it for a very long time (as operating systems go) So it's not like we don't have some basis of comparison to go on here.

That being said, people upgrade when they either have to or want to. I am fine with that. If your still finding XP useful then shoot who am I to argue. Reply

I think just about any OS will slack when you stick it on a 4200 RPM drive. I am assuming you meant 4200 instead of 5200?

I had Dell laptops back in 03-04 that performed like 386's because some bean counter figured we can save 20 bucks a laptop using 4200 rpm drives. Idiot didnt think about the wasted productivity when the user waits 10 minutes for the thing to boot and 2 mins to open outlook.

XP ain't no sprite. When my Vista box went down, I ripped out its X2 5200+ to replace my backup XP box's 3200+, and with that huge leap it now equals what my Vista box was like.
There really ain't a difference once you go dual-core with decent specs.

Compare this to Win 98. Whereas XP dogs a 3200+ with 2GB, 98 has sub-10 second boot times on a PIII 700MHz, and you aren't gonna notice a difference in snappiness from a Celeron 400. (You don't get any faster than 'instant'.)

XP is bloatware and really doesn't have a hardware niche. Anything that can't run Vista would be better off with Win98.

but you can't get drivers for windows 98. The installer will probably crash if you tried. plus, 98 was really unstable (compared to OSs of today) because programs could corrupt the memory easily. Not to mention no security of any kind. There is a penalty to make OS secure and stable. Reply

I bought Vista when it came out and dual booted it with XP. I didnt really like it, and Vista almost never got used. It was like that for a year and a half, and then I installed the W7 RC. I have not missed XP one bit.

As for the people who say W7 is less snappy than XP, well in my own experience W7 feels more snappy than XP to me any day. Reply

I noticed the opposite when testing XP VS Win7 RC and Beta.
I found XP to be more snappy than Win7, running it from a lower specced laptop.
I did have XP optimized though. Perhaps if I give the final version of Win7 a Win2000 theme, and optimize it a bit, it will be as snappy as XP. Reply

I noticed the opposite when testing XP VS Win7 RC and Beta.
I found XP to be more snappy than Win7, running it from a lower specced laptop.
I did have XP optimized though. Perhaps if I give the final version of Win7 a Win2000 theme, and optimize it a bit, it will be as snappy as XP. Reply

I'd be curious if you can get it to feel as fast as xp on a really slow laptop. I sold my netbook a year ago (1024x600 didn't cut it), but now that you can get ones with a better resolution screen I might consider getting another one with win7 if it doesn't run awful.

I bought W7 Pro 64-bit OEM for $140 shipped on newegg. So far I am reasonably happy. The interface takes a lot of getting used to for someone who has been running XP since it's release. I do get some blue screens, but I've narrowed it down to an iffy 64-bit "kX Audio" driver I am using for my ancient SB Audigy.

I definately noticed a speed improvement in general use. Everything from navigating folders to opening programs and browsing the internet seems snappier. I am running a decent setup, so maybe W7 can scale better with the additional power of todays machines. (Q6600 @ 3.4GHz, 4GB DDR2 1066 , HD4870, Spinpoint F1 7200rpm drives). I really want to see how a SSD helps performance, but I can't justify the price yet. Reply

well, dear Xp user we have a short and straight to the point answer for ya: welcome to the 21st century:)
it's not that we don't love old machines like Pontiac Firebird but....this doesn't apply to computer hardware or software:) Reply

Lol. That isn't an argument. In fact, I don't even know what you are trying to convey. That Windows 7 is newer, and thus automatically better? That isn't a very logical conclusion.

Widows XP runs most programs fine. Why would anyone want to buy a new operating system, when their old one they already paid for works? I'll buy Windows 7 when I build a new computer, but there is no compelling reason to buy it for any other reason. After reading this article, I feel less compelled to change my operating system than I did before I read it - as there just aren't any compelling features added since XP (to me). Reply

XP it a decade old, it REALLY should just hurry up and die. It's holding progress back, too many installs still use IE6 which is a massive headache for web developers, and it has more holes than my socks. 7 is massive upgrade from XP, even installing 7 is infinitely easier than XP. This article fails to mention many many features of windows 7, but then it's more about performance numbers.

Yes XP "gets the job done", so would windows 98 for many people, but stop confusing that with the OS actually being any good these days.
7 is Microsofts best OS by far, period. Reply

in fact, I have to buy a new OS in the coming weeks, and I would prefer that to be w7 because it's more future-proof, but I'm afraid I'd need some hard data to change my current conclusion that something's wrong with w7's opengl implementation, otherwise it will have to be xp

so, if anybody can point me somewhere where I can see results of w7 not being slower than xp in viewport performance in 3dsmax (opengl) or maya, I would greatly appreciate it

(remember: no specviewperf, that one is only useful if you're still in 2006)

in the meantime, please don't say my results are bullshit: they are results Reply

If you can wait,I'd say by all means wait until there are more benchmarks out!
Win7 is out less than a week, give it some time!
But if you need to choose now,I'd say go for 7!

Not only is it future proof,on desktops the difference is hardly noticeable!
Windows 7 has better SSD and HT/multiCore support.

There is a difference, XP because of being lighter, is faster in some benchmarks, but the difference is hardly noticeable!
If you have any machine running more than 2 cores, or 1 core with HT, go with Windows 7.
Any older single core machines work best with XP.

The choice XP VS Win7 only matters on low specced machines,or machines that run certain programs or games at a very low performance.

As far as bugs, there could be bugs in 7.
If your program is not able to install in Vista your chances may increase that it will not be (fully) compatible in 7.
But give it some time,and many bugs will be ironed out soon! Reply

When you put up comparisons, please put up legit ones instead of spreading FUD.

Your first link has comparisons with different hardware, and when the hardware was the same, different drivers. I wouldn't consider it a very good test at all.

Your second link was done only with Vista. Although Windows 7 and Vista are the 'same' under the hood, I'm pretty sure Win7 has been better optimized than Vista, much like how XP SP3 is much more optimized than XP in its first release. Reply

Don't bother about him.
People like that either don't have any brains, or they play computer games all day long!

You're far from being the only one!
Netbooks are still sold with WinXP as their main OS,
The majority of the businesses are still running XP,
Windows 7 has been out less than a month and many businesses aren't fully ready yet to do the switch.

Only businesses that had to purchase new machines in the past year had no other choice to go with Vista or pay extra to downgrade to XP.
Or, businesses with people that know nothing of IT, are working in the IT, and wanted vista for it's shiny factor!

So don't feel left out! Even today, as we speak there are more computers in the world running XP than vista!
Newer does not mean better!
And I understand you fully not to trade a good OS in for a resource hogging clogging one!

I'm using XP32bit on my laptops!
Happened to be that Vista AND 7 use more battery,and run hotter.
It is amazing how few reviews you see about battery life and performance "Windows 7 VS XP", cause if they did noone wanted to pay for 7!
Granted, 7 is better than Vista, but for notebooks and netbooks so far XP is the best!
I'd rather run XP, and play DX9 games (my notebook can't run any other game anyways) and have 5hours of battery life,
than I'd run Windows 7 and have 4,5hours.

I've only tested the beta's and RC1. I yet need to test a release version, but like you I will wait until prices come down!

I guess this separates the grain from the chaff! If you can wait,by all means, wait!
XP is far from done, that's why it's the only OS that comes prebundled with Windows 7 Ultimate for compatibility! Reply

Interestingly, I just noticed something sent out from my company's IT department. I still use XP, as does the other 75,000+ employees. They're targeting December 2009 to move to Vista/office 2007.

I then saw something about Windows 7. Apparently, in bold print, the company is "Migrating to Windows 7/Office 2007" in "early 2010". So we get to use Vista for all of about 3-5 months. Note that this is for all lease refreshes for hardware. So I won't be getting Windows 7 until I get a new machine (which will be in 2 years).

Honestly, XP needs to die. It needs to. It's security model is outdated, it has way too many installs of IE6, etc.

I like XP, I think most of us do. I never upgraded to vista and stuck with xp on all my machines, but I've always known with Win7 I'd have to move on.

I upgraded one of my laptops to Win7 yesterday, it was the smoothest OS install ever. It even found all the drivers, everything without any work from me. I used ninite to install all the common apps and was up and running in a couple minutes. Responsiveness and performance are fine. The new media center can play all my divx content and it let me add libraries over my wifi connection - all seemless.

I'll do one of my development computers next, but I really have to say again, that was the most painless, flawless, install of any os.
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I agree that you have a point, the comparisons are made by humble users with the hardware we have around and limited time and resources, so they can't be as rigorous as what you'd find in a site like anandtech

BUT we're testing something that is interesting and rarely tested, and we're getting some real results saying one should stick to XP in an opengl workstation

I definitely don't think it is FUD

(in particular, in the first link drivers were different in XP and w7, but each of them is the best driver you can use in that platform, so I still think it's a fair comparison, in whick XP came 20% ahead; and the 200% difference between XP and vista in the second link is just breathtaking) Reply

Who cares if you run it faster on 7. Plenty of people well majority of those who buy HP/Dell/Acer etc just surf, do twittering/facebook/work on word/excel/powerpoint/outlook. What makes it faster to run the bloated office 2k7+ apps on 7 than office2k3 on xp? Oh that's right they're barely faster, even slower in some comparison.